Winchester school district promotes healthy eating with Veggie of the Week program

WINSTED >> Winchester Public Schools system is offering a plan to help foster an appreciation of healthy eating with a program it calls Veggie of the Week. The hope is that students will not only eat more vegetables but find them enjoyable.

The Veggie of the Week series is being promoted by the Fit Together, which is Northwestern Connecticut’s healthy eating and active living initiative. The initiative is a collaboration of local organizations and individuals, who provide ways to improve the overall health of the community by making it easier for people to lead healthy lives. The Veggie of the Week program in the schools is only one of the institutional changes the initiative hopes to enact.

The school lunch program will feature one selected vegetable each week. Program leaders are distributing score cards and encouraging students to record when they eat the featured veggie. Each month the score cards will be collected and participants’ names will be entered into a drawing.

The program was started as a way to get students and families involved in healthy lunch options. According to Jason Cohen, Director of the Winsted Branch of the YMCA, families can also keep a score card.

Veggie of the Week program directors want families to take part in the program by purchasing the featured vegetables at a number of participating restaurants, grocers and businesses throughout Winsted.

Each week, Fit Together will highlight a recipe with the featured vegetable as an effort to engage families to use the recipes at home.

“I find kids are pretty willing to try new things if it’s presented in a fun way,” said Art Lehne, the Food Services Director for Winchester Public Schools, “and once they do, they’ll be hooked, and hopefully get the rest of their family on board.”

Cohen, who is also the co-chair of the initiative, said the goal is to get the entire community thinking about healthy eating.

While Veggie of the Week actually started earlier this summer, Cohen said it aligning it with the school schedule was the next phase.

“The goal of the initiative is to make students healthier through societal change,” Cohen said. “When you change a policy or institutionalize something it has an ongoing affect and serves and much wider population”

The school lunch program will begin Sept. 30 and continue throughout the school year. Cohen said the vegetables schedule is based on what the schools are able to provide.

“It’s just another policy change,” he said, “but rather than it be a onetime thing we want it to be a community wide, perpetual thing. We’re really excited about it, it’s been a slow introduction but we’re not discouraged. Most sustainable things start off that way.”

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Reporter Mercy Quaye covers statewide breaking news for The New Haven Register, The Middletown Press, and The Register Citizen. Reach the author at mquaye@registercitizen.com
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